SHAH ALAM, 5 Dec: The Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations (FOMCA) wants the Ministry of Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism (MDTCC) to thoroughly investigate the crisis of the RON97 supply that happened after the announcement of the fuel flotation price on December 1.
The Deputy President, Mohd Yusof Abdul Rahman, said that the possibility that the crisis occurred because of the actions of some parties trying to stock up on RON97 as they knew earlier that the flotation price will happen to reap profit.
“When there is increase in demand, the ministry should take immediate action so that stock is sent immediately to petrol stations without causing problems to users.
“It requires investigation from the ministry on why the shortage of RON97 happened.
“We cannot consider it a problem of supply, but there may be other issues that we do know of,” he told Selangor Kini.
He personally said that he began to realise that there will be a supply crisis because before the flotation price was announced, some petrol stations had already informed that the supply of RON97 had run out.
“A week before the announcement of the float, I saw that there were some stations that were out of RON97 stock. This means that a week before that, it (out of stock) had happened.
“When the difference between RON95 and RON97 was around 20 cents, perhaps many changed to RON97. So, maybe this happened in some areas because RON97 was taken in some places in Singapore while RON95 was taken in places like Port Dickson and Terengganu.
“Prior to this, only 10 percent used RON97, but when the price difference was low,then the demand had increased,” he added.
He explained that although there is the RON95 alternative petrol (not like diesel), it still create problems to motorists who specifically need to use RON97.
The shortage in RON97 has affected consumers after the price reduction of 9 cents, making the new price in December to be fixed at RM2.46 per litre.
Meanwhile, the price of RON95 went down by 4 cents to RM2.26 per litre, but diesel faced an increase of 3 cents, making the price to be fixed at RM2.23 per litre.
NS
